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Scare
Scaring monsters, causing them to flee can be useful in many cirumstances. Scaring a monster will typically cause it to move away from your position. It will not prevent the use of ranged attacks however, including offensive wands and breath weapons. Methods Note this table does not describe every nuance of each method; see the pages of the individual methods for full details. Effect If you are grabbed or engulfed by a monster, it will release or expel you when you scare it scaring a monster releases you. A fleeing monster will usually try to get further away from you monster runs away unless it is trapped trapped monsters can't run awayor eating eating monsters don't run away. The following monsters have special code to handle their movements, and will not always move away from you while scared: *pets pets have special movement *shopkeepers shopkeepers have special movement * s guards have special movement *covetous monsters covetous monsters have special movement * s aligned priests have special movement A fleeing monster may attack you in melee if it blunders into you when you are invisible or displaced, or it is confused, stunned, blinded impaired monsters may attack you or cornered. Monsters will never melee when adjacent to a square they think is protected by sanctuary, Elbereth or a scroll of scare monster (or an altar if a vampire) Sanctuary, Elbereth and scare monster prevent attacks altogether. Monsters will still use ranged attacks while fleeing. A monster will stop fleeing when any time has expired. If the scaring is untimed, it will stop fleeing 4% of the time on each move it makes, if its hit points are at maximum ending an untimed scare. Strategy There is no single perfect method of scaring enemies; all methods either allow monsters to resist or have significant exceptions. Thus it pays to keep multiple methods available. For example, Sanctuary, Elbereth or a tooled horn will not scare a ki-rin, but because this angelic being is not humanoid, applying a mirror will scare it 4/5ths of the time. A high level player might scare it with a spell of cause fear, but this will be successful less frequently than the humble mirror. Typically, in the early game, you can rely upon Elbereth, until you start meeting hostile humans or elves. Lower difficulty monsters in this group typically have little or no magic resistance and can be scared by an instrument, spell or wand. Later in the game, higher difficulty angelic beings and humans or elves have higher resistance and are thus harder to scare. The utility of scaring a monster depends on its behaviour. If you want to avoid a monster's melee attack, scaring is is very useful. This makes it ideal for creatures such as s and s. Once you have magic resistance and cold resistance however, scaring an is of dubious benefit. Because monsters with an untimed flee will flee until their hit points recover, it is worth considering attacking an enemy briefly in these cases to ensure it leaves you alone for as long as possible. References Category:Monster attributes